Ra'Shede Hageman, defensive tackle for the University of Minnesota Gophers football team, knows about strength and resilience - and not just on the football field. After being removed from his mother, Ra'Shede and his brother were placed in foster care. After twelve foster homes, Ra'Shede had a natural distrust for people. [Photo by Jerry Holt] [...]
In our last blog post we highlighted a film about a family, the Wilson's, and the director's commentary about the cycle of violence, poverty, drugs and interaction with the child welfare system intergenerationally and how difficult it is to break that cycle. Today we'd like to let you know about some of the other stories [...]
Filmmkaer Kathryn Hunt is interested in telling the stories of people on the margins. In this piece for Crosscut, Hunt writes that the people in her films "were tangled up with three social institutions that rarely touch the lucky rest of us: foster care, criminal justice (courts and prisons), and what we used to call [...]
Actor, playwright and composer Patrick Burns brings his personal story of resilience and tragedy to the stage. In "From Foster Care to Fabulous" Burns brings the audience along with him through four foster families he lived with as a teenager. You can watch a trailer for his show below: Learn more about Patrick Burns on [...]
The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adopioin has announced its list of the 100 Best Adoption-Friendly Workplaces in the U.S. This is the seventh annual list. Among the criteria the foundation uses to detrmine its ranking includes adoption benefits (the amount of financial reimbursement and paid leave for families that adopt), company programs that encourage and [...]
Last week the Donaldson Adoption Institute released its newest policy perspective titled, "A Need To Know: Enhancing Adoption Competency Among Mental Health Professionals. The report highlights the difficulty that adoptive families face when seeking clinical therapeutic services in finding practitioners who have a deep level understanding and training in permanency and adoption. While many therapists [...]
The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry estimates that ten million children witness incidences of domestic violence between their caregivers (or intimate partner violence [IPV]) each year. In addition, a recent U.S. survey showed that more than half of youth exposed to IPV had also been maltreated. Such exposure can result in manifestation of [...]
With the start of a new school year, there are many times when adopted children may be faced with challenges. These challenges may be everything from dealing with assignments such as creating a family tree, or bringing in a baby picture to class, or science projects that involve assumed biological-relatedness (see here for an example). [...]